NEW DELHI: If you thought getting an Aadhaar or unique identification (UID) number is critical only for poor households that need government sops, think again. Middle class as well as high-income Indians with salaried jobs and pensioners may need a UID number to tap their retirement savings from 2013.

In a directive issued on December 20, the labour ministry has told the Employees' Provident Fund Organisation (EPFO) to "embed" the Aadhaar number in bank accounts of beneficiaries in 43 districts by December 31.

"There is an urgent need to seed (or embed) Aadhaar numbers in the (bank) accounts of beneficiaries who receive benefits under the various schemes of EPFO," says the communication from the union labour ministry.

"The ministry has decided that seeding of Aadhaar numbers of beneficiaries be completed by December 31, 2012, for 43 districts, and for beneficiaries in other districts as early as possible," it added. The schemes administered by EPFO include provident fund and pension.

The directive has sent EPFO officials across the country into a tizzy as it already pays benefits directly into bank accounts of employees.

Almost 85% of EPFO payments are made via the National Electronic Funds Transfer (NEFT) programme.

PF offices have been asked to give "utmost priority" to obtaining Aadhaar numbers and savings bank account details of every employee in the 43 districts, which include Mumbai, Hyderabad, Pune, Mysore and parts of Delhi, by December 31.

But it is unclear from the wording of the circular as to what would happen if an employee does not possess an Aadhaar number. There is also no mention of what PF officials must do if employees have no Aadhaar numbers.

"EPFO has neither informed employers nor has it discussed this move with its board of trustees," said Sharad Patil, secretary general of the Employers' Federation of India. "I thought the government's focus for Aadhar-based payments was for paying subsidies to the poor, but EPF members are mostly above the poverty line by virtue of their salaried incomes," said Patil, who questioned the inclusion of EPFO schemes in the cash transfer system.

EPFO officials also questioned the rationale of including these schemes, largely meant for the salaried, under the ambit of Aadhar.

"It is not clear what leakages will be curbed by the use of Aadhaar numbers in our schemes as they already involve direct transfer of benefits into members' bank accounts," said a regional PF commissioner in charge of one of the 43 districts where the government wants direct cash transfers to start by January 1, 2013.

Officials pointed out that EPFO's pension scheme, where 8.33% of an employees' monthly pay is invested, is the only one that involves a government subsidy (of 1.16% of salary). This subsidy is directly paid to EPFO by the government annually, without any interface with pensioners whose monthly pension is remitted to their bank accounts.

Though the government has acknowledged that EPFO payments are already made through banks, it has asked officials to ensure that Aadhaar numbers of all its 8.15 crore members are added to their bank account details for settling claims.

"All the possible sources like employers, banks and individual pensioners are to be tapped to collect the above," the ministry directive sent to PF offices on December 20 said, adding that special camps may be held in sync with district authorities to collect workers' Aadhaar data.

The employer body, which plans to question the basis of the decision at EPFO's upcoming board meeting of January 15, pointed out that earlier talks between EPFO and UIDAI (the organisation implementing the UID scheme) to use Aadhaar as a permanent account number for EPF members had fallen through as the PF office had expressed doubts about the infallibility of the unique ID scheme.

Another board member had a huge concern about collecting Aadhaar numbers from employees.

"The Aadhaar number itself is yet to get legislative backing as the parliamentary committee examining the relevant law had rejected it. The government needs to make amendments to the EPF law and get parliamentary approval for recognising Aadhaar, before forcing PF beneficiaries to get these unique numbers," said AD Nagpal, general secretary of the Hind Mazdoor Sabha.

"Most EPFO members have multiple PF accounts created after each job change. To curb this problem, we have been trying to give a unique ID number to employees since 2001, but it hasn't worked," Patil said. "But the ministry's directive is focused only on linking payments to Aadhaar numbers," he said.